Chain Reaction

"Gage Darnell, you...you low-down liar. If you don't come home today, don't bother!" Glad that he wasn't standing face to face with his wife, Gage clenched his large hand around the telephone receiver. But he had no trouble picturing the anger flashing in Lily's beautiful green eyes. Or her blond hair swirling in a golden cloud as she shook her head. She probably had a pot of chili on the stove. And crisp clean sheets on the king-size bed, since this would have been the first time in weeks that they'd seen each other. He'd been aching to make love with her, then eat the wonderful meal she'd prepared while they caught up on the details of each other's lives. And he'd hoped he could still make it home--at least for one night before he had to go back to work. That was before two of his security men had called in sick, and he'd decided he had to stay on the Eastern Shore. He hadn't felt comfortable dumping the total responsibility for the Cranesbrook detail on Brayden Sloane. Not when his partner was already jumpy and out of sorts. So Gage was still two hours away from home, where Lily was expecting him to walk in the door any minute. He'd figured they could talk about Five Star's problems after dinner. Now he was trapped in a no-win situation, caught between his wife and his partner. He owed them both his loyalty, but his relationship with Bray went all the way back to when they'd been in Special Forces training together. Then, in Afghanistan, when they'd saved each other's lives, the bond had grown even stronger. He gulped and said, "Something's come up, and I can't leave Cranesbrook." "I arranged to take off work this weekend. I thought you did, too. What's going on now?" While he tried to frame an answer, she plowed ahead. "You're saying Cranesbrook Associates is more important that our marriage?" He recognized the calm, deliberate tone. It was a dangerous sign. "Sweetheart, I'm under contract to protect this place." The rest of it was too complicated to explain in a five-minute phone conversation, so he fell back on one of his tried-and-true arguments. "And you know we need the money." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized he'd made a big mistake. Her voice turned cold and hard as she answered. "Gage, we don't need the money. We both have good jobs. Our finances are just fine. Or they would be--if you didn't buy all that electronics equipment every time you got some spare cash." "It's all stuff I need for my--" "Experiments," she finished for him. "If you're not at Cranesbrook, you're in your garage workshop. Or your home gym pumping iron." As he realized how far off track they'd gotten in a few short minutes, he winced. He didn't bother to defend his need to keep in shape. But he couldn't stop himself from saying, "I'm on the edge of a breakthrough with the miniature advance warning system." "How many times have I heard that?" He'd been on the defensive. Now he was starting to get pissed off. "If I can perfect the electronics, we never have to worry about money again." "Gage, don't you understand..." Before she could finish the sentence, alarm bells began to clang in the security station and somewhere else on the Cranesbrook campus. His gaze shot to the monitoring panel he'd installed in the lounge area. Either they had a false alarm--or an emergency in Lab 7. Lily obviously heard the noise. "Good God. What was that?" "Don't know. Gotta go." On alert, yet relieved to end the conversation, he slammed the receiver into the cradle and ran into the hall, where he almost collided with Bray, who was ushering office workers toward the exit. On the second day of their deployment to Afghanistan, Bray had saved Gage's life by yanking him in back of a cement wall just as a sniper had opened fire on their patrol. And he'd done the same favor a few months later for Bray, pulling him out of a burning trYork, Rebecca is the author of 'Chain Reaction', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373229468 and ISBN 0373229461.